


the dead are not silent

by captainhurricane



Category: Metro 2033 - All Media Types, Metro: Last Light
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 08:19:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1891920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you live and you die in the metro.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dead are not silent

**Author's Note:**

> spoiler-ish for the Redemption and Ranger-endings.

The silence isn’t nothing Artyom isn’t used to. There had been silence on the dawn of the first day after the night when he was whisked away from his mother’s arms. There had been silence when the missiles had done their work and turned the Dark Ones to ash. Artyom had sat on top of the tower for so long that his gasmask had given a beep as a warning for a new filter. Even then, he had not quite wanted to leave. I deserve this. We deserve this. We do not deserve noise or greatness, we deserve this silence. That is what he had thought as he had descended back into the darkness of the Metro, to the last shreds of humankind and listened for those who heralded him as a hero. Artyom had locked himself up inside the room given to him in Polis and had kept his hands over his ears for a long time after that. The image of the missiles ascending and then hitting their targets burned into his eyelids. 

He lives inside the silence in his mind for a long while before the noise gets clearer, before he can take the noise without ending up on the floor, curled in a fetal position. They did not deserve it, he murmurs aloud, sometimes. Only when he has nothing but the dim light of his tiny room. They did not deserve it. He dreams of the Dark Ones and wakes to the sound of their ghostly whispers. He dreams of waking up and walking through the narrow corridors, on the rails and realizing the ghosts have overtaken the Metro, their shadows reflected in the light of his headlamp. Those are the dreams he wakes up from sweating, eyes wide and hyperventilating. 

x

Artyom can take the silence, but it is the noise he cannot take. Even after the little one had pressed its cold hand against his, had spoken into his mind and then saved them all, even after that Artyom finds himself laying alone in his room and trying to drown out the noise. Those days aren’t often but they happen. He pushes it aside with his wife and she pretends not to see it. It’s alright, she only says. It is, he agrees and turns his back. 

x

He dreams of walking down the empty Red Line and seeing the empty shells of trains, guard posts unoccupied and fires still burning. He dreams of listening to the ghosts whispering, murmuring. Reminding him about his own fate, the sheer weight of the knowledge that humanity will never walk freely on the surface again and will never see the blue sky of the past again. Artyom wakes from those dreams with tears on his cheeks and a hitch in his throat. He goes to the surface entrances then and doesn’t call out, the little one arriving soon, now as tall as the other ones of his kind yet peace lingering in his black visage. Oh, Artyom, the creature whispers. Artyom watches the empty landscape, the white bones of the once great city of Moscow and takes a few deep, huge gulps of air inside his mask. The Dark One sets his long, dark fingers on his shoulder and whispers his name again. 

x

Artyom can take the silence but sometimes, sometimes it reminds him of the missiles. Ascending. Descending. Turning life into ash.


End file.
